For once I’m glad to have woken up in the middle of the night.

Sandie Peggie cleared of gross misconduct allegations

NHS Fife has cleared the nurse at the centre of a high-profile tribunal case of all disciplinary charges.

Sandie Peggie was being investigated by the health board after Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman doctor, accused her of a “hate incident” and patient safety breaches following a confrontation in a changing room at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy.

News of the outcome of the internal investigation came just hours before Ms Peggie’s Employment Tribunal against the health board and Dr Upton is due to resume.

In a statement, Ms Peggie’s solicitor, Margaret Gribbon, said: “On Tuesday July 14, the evening before the resuming of her tribunal, Sandie Peggie received confirmation from Fife Health Board that, following a disciplinary hearing, none of the gross misconduct allegations against her were upheld.

“This follows a disciplinary hearing on June 25, which considered four gross misconduct allegations: two relating to patient care failures, one of ‘misgendering’ Dr Upton, and one relating to her encounter with Dr Upton in the workplace female-only changing room on Christmas Eve 2023.

“Sandie is relieved and delighted that this 18-month-long internal process has concluded and cleared her of all allegations.”

She’ll never get those horrible 18 months back though.

Yet another buffoon yammering about the “Lemkin Institute” as if it were Amnesty International. It’s a guy with a laptop. That’s it. It has no significance.

Ok now Trump is pissed off. He thought he and Volodya were buddies. Of course he did: being both vain and stupid made it inevitable.

Trump did not develop a new fondness for Ukraine or its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. He did not abruptly become a believer in the traditional transatlantic alliances prized by his predecessors as a counterweight to Moscow. Rather, Trump got insulted.

By ignoring Trump’s pleas to end the war and instead ratcheting up the fighting, Putin has made Trump look like the junior partner in the relationship. The Russian leader has “really overplayed his hand,” one of the officials told me. “The president has given him chance after chance, but enough is enough.”

Yeah! Pretty soon he’s just another fella around here!

Trump and Putin have spoken a half dozen times in the past six months, and Trump has grown steadily more frustrated, the four people told me. He told advisers this spring that he was beginning to think Putin didn’t want the war to end, an assessment that U.S. intelligence agencies reached more than a year ago.

Bahahahahahahaha oh god that’s like a punchline to a very stale joke. “Why Adolf, I’m beginning to think you don’t like Jews. Why Niagara River, I’m beginning to think you have a slight drop-off here. Why Arizona, I’m beginning to think you have a bit of a ditch north of Flagstaff.”

When Trump recently intensified his calls for a cease-fire—at one point writing on social media, “Vladimir, STOP!”—Putin chose to defy him by escalating attacks on Ukraine yet again.

You astonish me. How could Putin ignore something as official and heartfelt as “Vladimir, STOP!” on social media?

With Putin continuing to ignore his pleas for a deal, Trump has felt humiliated, fearing that he appears weak

YA THINK???

“I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done. And then I hang up and say, ‘That was a nice phone call,’ and the missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office today, referring to Putin. “And then after that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn’t mean anything.”

Oh come on now, mustn’t be hasty. Make it twenty times. Make it fifty. Show them how generous and patient you really are.

Suzanne Moore on the Sandie Peggie tribunal:

[Dr “Beth”] Upton had begun transitioning in 2022 but claimed to be both “distressed” and “afraid”. If you’ve ever been physically assaulted or intimidated, you’ll know what it’s like to truly feel that way. But Peggie is small – and Upton is certainly not.

I have been, and I do know. Peggie is small and Upton is huge, plus he has the Trans Army behind him. I don’t believe for a second that he felt distressed or afraid. My bet is on sadistic glee.

Nevertheless, Peggie was suspended by her managers and faced a disciplinary hearing. Somehow, in these cases, it’s always the woman who says no who ends up being portrayed as threatening and bullying. The gender cult demands unquestioning acceptance of the idea that trans people are always victims.

Along with the idea that they are always more “marginalized” and persecuted and intimidated and bullied and yadda yadda than women are. It’s a core part of the Steal Everything approach to women that makes trans dogma such fun.

NHS Fife wanted to keep this quiet. Understandably. They sought to keep Upton anonymous and have the upcoming hearing held in private. Neither of these things happened, which is just as well, because what’s being exposed is a muddle of mismanagement and deep stupidity.

The board of NHS Fife also did not want to disclose how much this has all cost, but they have been forced to: £220,000 up until the adjournment in February. Another 11 days of hearings could push costs up towards £1 million. The taxpayer, remember, is paying for both Upton’s and NHS Fife’s defence.

The socialism of huge men in skirts.

Currently we are in a situation where many of our institutions are so immersed in gender ideology that they cannot respond to the actual needs of women. Or, indeed, correctly and swiftly interpret the law.

This immersion, though, was never organic – it did not come from a place of wanting fairness for everyone. If it did, I would support it.

The truth is that it has been imposed from on high as a response to intense lobbying and acquiescence to activist demands.

One can see this particularly in the case of the BBC, whose top brass started taking meetings with Stonewall activists in 2012. Everyone was sold on the idea of trans rights being the new civil rights and a symbol of being cutting edge.

This is how the full-scale abandonment of both women’s rights and any notion of safeguarding has been enacted by supposedly progressive institutions – in the name of some non-specific idea of modernity. It has been appalling.

And where do we end up? With public money being spent to fight a working-class nurse who doesn’t want to get undressed in front of a man? How is this right?

The emperor is naked. We have long known that. Let him parade his nakedness in his own special cubicle. Get out of ours!

And stay out!

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Two gowns on his shoulder.

I’m guessing that Zara also fails to provide changing rooms based on astrological sign, or the colour of one’s aura.

A non-binary shopper said they felt ‘dehumanised’ and accused a fashion brand of being ‘transphobic’ after they were refused entry to a women’s changing room.

No, there’s no such thing as a “non-binary shopper.” Someone might claim to be “non-binary”, but that declaration does not change their sex, or remove it altogether. They might, at most, be “gender nonconforming”. But, being a beardy bloke, he should not be trying to access women’s changing rooms.

A clothing store specializing in women’s clothing can’t be expected to offer facilities for male crossdressers, or male crossdressers claiming to be “non-binary.” If he wants to, he can shop online, buy whatever he wants, using whatever name he wants, and nobody would be any the wiser. But that’s no solution, that’s part of the problem; he needs to be noticed. He’s special, and must be pampered, catered to, and validated. If he’s not sufficiently satisfied, he gets to pout in front of an audience. Not only that, he gets to bully and shame real, live people. Shopping online robs him of all of these pleasures; in cyberspace, no one can hear you whine.

As far as “dehumanized”? No. I’d say it’s more likely the other way around. Just as “bringing your whole self” to work doesn’t really help job performance or workplace morale if your fellow employees have to alternately genuflect and walk on eggshells because you’re so much more fucking awesome than they are, because of your invisible gender feels.

“Bringing your whole self” shopping doesn’t enhance the retail experience for those forced to deal with your fucking awesome invisible gender feels. For you, they’re a captive audience, doing their best to please customers in order to make a living. Making unreasonable demands of store staff, who are obligated by their positions to try to make you happy, is abusive. Your money gives you power over them. Your actions might cause problems for the company they’re working for (like bad publicity, when you go running in tears to the press with your non-story, on a slow news day). In fact, you’re counting on exactly that implicit threat in order to get your way. Depending on the employer, the clerk you’re pressuring might be sacked if the boss decides “The customer is always right,” even though sometimes, the customer is just an asshole.

Staff refusing to let you access women’s spaces which you are not entitled to enter, for the safety and dignity of their female clientele (let’s not forget them, shall we), does nothing to damage your “humanity”. It might make you confront the boundaries of your delusion, and the limits of your ability to force others to accommodate, and participate in it, but that’s on you, not them. Seeing your comfort as more important than women’s safety doesn’t make you the good guy, let alone a “victim.” Your interest in women’s change rooms makes you a suspicious man. A similar insistence on accessing a children’s area in which to change would also, correctly, raise a safeguarding flag. Claiming an NB “gender identity” does not change that. You are no less a man, and therefore, under prudent, and necessary, safeguarding rules, no less a threat than any other random man.

Tying your “humanity” to others’s compliance with your selfish, unreasonable demands is not a sign of good psychological health. Ditto investing so much (anything?) in a nonsensical “gender identity,” in order to be special or different for just existing. Everyone exists. You’re not that special. Get over it, or get help. Shop from home; leave the clerks (and the female customers) alone.

Oh goody, an opportunity to hassle the workers at a clothing store. Always fun.

A non-binary shopper said they felt ‘dehumanised’ and accused a fashion brand of being ‘transphobic’ after they were refused entry to a women’s changing room.

That’s just silly. Humans are the only ones who pretend to be the opposite sex and make a big fuss on social meeja if no one believes them.

Giorgio Firico, 21, tried to go to the ladies changing room at Zara in Oxford when the female assistant told them it was against the rules and refused to give them a number for the clothing.

Giorgio, who studies in the US and is in Oxford visiting a friend, said: “I was wearing men’s clothing but I had two gowns on my shoulder, it was obvious what I wanted to try on.”

It was obvious he wanted to be a pest. That so often is obvious.

Zara has been contacted for response, but had not responded by the time we went to press.

Yeah and it never will. Your attempt to be interesting has fallen flat.

But…but…but…

Good Law Project aka Jolyon Maugham exclaims Trans people must be allowed to have children.

But sir, trans people have had their child-making bits removed or rendered nugatory.

The Gender Recognition Panel is refusing to legally recognise trans people’s affirmed gender if they’re trying to conceive children. But that breaches their human rights.

Does it? How? Is legal recognition of “affirmed” aka fake “gender” a human right? It seems a good deal too niche to be a right. It may be a right according to the Jolyons of the world, but that’s not really definitive.

Good Law Project has appeared at the High Court to support a man who has been denied his gender recognition certificate. The Gender Recognition Panel rejected his application, saying that because he was trying to conceive, he had not been living as a man.

See, that just underlines what a consignment of geriatric shoe manufacturers all this is. What tf does “living as a man” even mean? Is it like children living as someone off the tv by thinking it inside their heads? Bullshit in, bullshit out, so a bullshit “gender certificate” is going to remain bullshit whether the man is trying to conceive or trying to count the hairs on his chest.

The full horrors of Tuam are about to be dug up.

The full excavation of a mass grave of babies and young children at Tuam in County Galway is under way. The exhumations will be carried out at the site of an institution for unmarried mothers, which operated between 1925 and 1961.

The story came to international attention 11 years ago, after amateur historian Catherine Corless discovered there were death certificates for 796 babies and children who were in the institution, but no burial records. In 2017, investigators found what they described as “significant quantities of human remains” at the site.

What the BBC carefully does not spell out is that 706 dead babies and children is a massive number and indicates neglect at best and horrors at worst. The Irish Catholic church is under the microscope again and it’s not going to be pretty.

The bodies were in underground chambers in a disused sewage system.

Because the Irish Catholic Church saw them as so much garbage. But hey, don’t you dare have an abortion. You have to gestate that fetus to term and then push it out so that we can starve and torture it to death.

The institution, which was known as St Mary’s mother-and-baby home, was run by Catholic religious order the Bon Secours Sisters and owned by Galway County Council.

Yeah really very wonderful bon secours there. Top notch. Almost as good as handing the babies over to a pack of wolves.

Scientists say the remains are largely “commingled” – in other words, the bones are mixed up.

Because the babies were thrown into the sewer system like so much garbage.

Where are the grownups???

He was doing them a favor.

The US Department of Justice dropped charges on Saturday against Michael Kirk Moore, the Utah doctor accused of destroying more than $28,000 worth of government-provided Covid-19 vaccines and administering saline to children instead of the shot.

Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, announced the news in a statement on the social media platform X, saying the charges had been dismissed under her direction.

“Dr Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so,” Bondi said. “He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing.”

Excuse me no he didn’t give them a choice, he lied to them.

According to a 2023 press release from the US attorney’s office in Utah, Moore distributed at least 1,937 fraudulent vaccination record cards in exchange for either direct payment or required donations to a specific charity. The minors he gave saline shots to were under the impression, at the request of their parents, that they were receiving a Covid-19 shot.

That’s not “doing them a favor.”

Recently, the Trump administration canceled a $766m award to Moderna on the research and development of H5N1 bird flu vaccines, and officials announced new restrictions and regulations for Covid mRNA vaccines.

Well that’s fucking terrifying. They’re going to let bird flu run amok. It will be like London in 1665 all over again.

H/t Tim Harris

That’s rich coming from UN Women.

What is the point of calling something “for women” if you’re going to let men have it? Why not just skip the calling it “for women” part if you’re going to do that?

A row at Hampstead Heath Ponds over permission for transgender women to continue swimming in the Ladies’ Pond could reach the High Court.

The campaign group Sex Matters is planning to make a £50,000 legal claim against the City of London Corporation, which runs the bathing ponds on Hampstead Heath, north London.

Since 2019 transgender women, who were born biologically male, have been allowed to swim in the Ladies’ Pond under formal guidance.

Transgender women who were born biologically male and remain biologically male because that’s how that works.

Critics say, however, that this is a breach of the law, in the light of the Supreme Court ruling in April that biological men should not have access to women-only spaces.

I’m a critic, and I say that it’s been an insult and unfair all along, ruling or no ruling.

The organisation that runs the pond is strengthening its policy of welcoming transgender women to the Ladies’ Pond and said that it was planning to put up signs to say that trans women could use the pond, changing rooms and showers.

Because it’s just so necessary to shove men into everything that belongs to women, and refuse to let women have anything just for women. It’s imperative to keep punishing women for being women – disgusting useless people that we are.

Originally a comment by iknklast on Consequences for marine life.

Sulfuric acid will fall as acid rain. Particulate matter of all sorts often leads to (temporary) cooling, but it doesn’t last as long as carbon dioxide. As the carbon increases in the air, the other pollutants remain the same, and eventually they get overwhelmed.

While the optimum trade off may be fewer stomata, it makes it foolish to say that plants will gain that much from increased carbon dioxide. Which is what I was saying earlier – unless the plant growth is limited by carbon dioxide, and ONLY carbon dioxide, you will not likely see great increases in plant growth. Since nitrogen and water are the two greatest limitations on plant growth, and there are only certain conditions where CO2 is limited, the overall increased growth of plants will likely be minimal. The death of plants from increased heat, and from increased insects (insects reproduces better when its warmer) will more than offset that.

The answer? At this point, I would say there isn’t one. Every answer has a downside, yes, even nuclear. But…the answer would be a combination of wind, solar, and nuclear, with limited use also of hydropower. The real answer is to reduce the population, because every single possible answer will be met with, yes, but it will hurt the poor. Yes, but we have to feed eight billion people. Yes, but….

There are excuses floating around in the ozone, and whenever something is suggested that might lead to a change in lifestyles, someone just grabs whichever one is floating by at that moment and deploys it…wham!…to smash your argument to smithereens. We really need to get off our buts.

The truly real answer, though, is the one NOT written on the front of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – panic. But that won’t solve anything, so we say not to, and we still don’t solve anything, because no one thinks it’s worth panicking about. Both solutions are non-starters, and so we don’t start.

It’s sort of like peace in the Middle East.

A long backgrounder piece on the Peggie v NHS case with lots of interesting details.

NHS Fife may be fatally undermining its own case against a nurse who had an altercation in a hospital changing room with Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman, which resumes this week

Good. Keep undermining, NHS Fife.

Peggie, an experienced nurse, was experiencing a sudden and heavy period and feared that it had bled through to her scrubs. She entered the hospital changing rooms to find Upton, a biologically male doctor who identifies as female.

What was said between the pair is disputed, but there was a confrontation. Peggie expressed her discomfort with sharing changing facilities with a colleague she considered male and, within hours, a bullying complaint was lodged by Upton.

That part can never be underlined enough. A woman needing to change her blood-soaked clothes is called a bully by an extremely tall hulking man because she objected to his presence in the women’s changing room. He said she bullied him. Those five words sum up what is so wrong with this revolting perverse women-hating ideology.

The Supreme Court ruling in April that backed the “biological” definition of woman — ostensibly a big boost for Peggie’s case and the wider “gender-critical” cause — led to immediate calls for NHS Fife to throw in the towel. It has refused to do so, contributing to a legal bill of over £220,000 (and rising). 

Because women must be both punished for disobedience and deprived of all rights.

During the tribunal, Jane Russell, the KC representing the NHS and Upton, launched what was perceived to be a character assassination on Peggie, suggesting that the nurse supported Donald Trump, had behaved like a “dog with a bone” and had been “haranguing this poor doctor” ​during the changing room showdown.

This poor poor poor doctor who towers over the nurse – yes he’s definitely the victim here.

One MP said: “Personally I find the case completely astonishing. It speaks to the SNP’s whole approach to gender issues and the extent to which it has taken hold in the public sector. Sandie Peggie’s case is the clearest example of how this niche ideology has taken over, even taking precedence over the law.

“If they lose this case, as they surely will, there will be serious questions of the NHS Fife leadership and the SNP government about how this was ever allowed to get to this stage. There will have to be accountability.”

The answer is gender ideology. It rots the brain.

Although the witness list has not been made public, the tribunal will hear from Isla Bumba, the equality and human rights officer at NHS Fife, whose advice Peggie’s managers relied upon after Peggie complained about Upton’s presence in women’s facilities. ​She had met Upton in the changing rooms twice before the Christmas Eve row.

Bumba, who is in her twenties and worked as a Covid contact tracer for two years after graduating in 2020 before landing the NHS Fife role, told Peggie’s line manager, Esther Davidson, that Upton had a “right” to use the female changing rooms because she “identifies as a woman”.

Bumba, who is paid between £50,861 and £59,159 per year, has described herself as a “support aid” to NHS staff and dealt with issues such as “staff [who] are not sure what the correct pronouns for someone are”.

[Michael] Foran said the fact that NHS managers deferred to Bumba, rather than to lawyers, was “baffling” but spoke to a wider cultural issue in the public sector.

Yes we know what that cultural issue is.

Other key witnesses ​include Kate Searle, an emergency medicine consultant, who was Upton’s line manager and agreed that she should use women’s facilities. Searle also received Upton’s complaint about Peggie’s conduct in the early hours of Christmas Day, 2023.

She has been accused of sending an email to consultants four days later, presenting Upton as the victim and Peggie as the “bully” before an investigation had been opened.

To repeat: Upton is huge; Peggie is not. That’s not always relevant but it sure as hell is here. It’s at the core of the ideology as well as this case – the absolute, ferociously imposed dogma that a man who claims to be a woman is always the victim and a woman who objects to his presence in women’s toilets or politics is always the bully.

Trans community praised for bravery in new film

Says the BBC, drooling slightly.

Film-makers have praised the bravery of the trans community in Cumbria for sharing their experiences in a new documentary.

Oh yes, it’s very brave to yammer at the BBC about how brave you are for being gender-special. The risks are horribly real: you might be laughed at!

I ME US chronicles the stories of those living in the county who are transgender, non-binary or gender non-conforming.

Ah, gender non-conforming – so it includes women who wear jeans and men who wear pink T shirts? So it’s everyone in Cumbria then? Being all brave n shit?

It is being screened for free in venues across Cumbria over July and August, including Rheged cinema in Penrith and Tullie in Carlisle.

Producer and project manager at PINC, Pam Eland, said they wanted to take a snapshot of community “to get their voices heard out there”.

Yes, because otherwise they are so very silent.

Talk about rubbing salt into the wound…

A divorcee has been forced by a judge to pay half for her ex-husband’s trans surgery.

The mother argued that it was unfair that she had to stump up £80,000 for the procedure when the decision to transition had led to the breakdown of her marriage.

But in what is believed to be the first case of its kind, the judge said that the surgery was a “need”, not a “whim”, and therefore it was “reasonable” for the cost to be met out of their joint funds.

But the relevant antonym here is not “whim” but “delusion.” It’s a delusion that surgery can change people’s sex, so it seems absurd as well as unfair to tell a dissenting spouse to pony up for half the cost.

The husband, 58, had said that the argument was “like saying someone who had cancer should not have the surgery” during the hearing at Brighton Family Court.

Yeah well people who believe in magic gender will say any old shit. Of course it’s not like that. Wanting to be the opposite sex is not like cancer. Trying to change sex is not like medical treatment for cancer. The simile is not a simile.

But the husband, who says his wife always knew he was trans, said that it should be “treated in the way of any other medical costs which would ordinarily be met from the joint assets”.

No, because it’s not comparable to “any other medical costs” because it’s not medical. A mistaken warped fashionable stupid idea about the self is not a medical issue.

[The judge] said he was satisfied the “surgery was meeting a genuine and deep-felt medical/psychological need”.

“This cannot be, and has not been, said to have been carried out as a whim when all of the effort and time that the respondent has invested in the process is considered,” the judge noted.

Deep felt, maybe, but genuine, of course not. Dude wanting to play-act being a woooman is not a medical need no matter how “deep-felt” it is. That’s an argument from early childhood. “I neeeeeeed the toy or I will die!!!!” sobs child in the toy store, but child is wrong about that.

It’s disturbing when even judges believe the lies.

FEMA wasn’t answering the phone.

Two days after catastrophic floods roared through Central Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters.

The agency laid off the contractors on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not extended, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

So in other words there is no federal emergency management. We’re on our own. Good luck!

The details on the unanswered calls on July 6, which have not been previously reported, come as FEMA faces intense scrutiny over its response to the floods in Texas that have killed more than 120 people. The agency, which President Trump has called for eliminating, has been slow to activate certain teams that coordinate response and search-and-rescue efforts.

Sorry, folks, disaster relief is a luxury we just can’t afford.

After floods, hurricanes and other disasters, survivors can call FEMA to apply for different types of financial assistance. People who have lost their homes, for instance, can apply for a one-time payment of $750 that can help cover their immediate needs, such as food or other supplies.

On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.

That evening, however, Ms. Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.

The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.

Look, the federal government has more important things to do, like flying Trump back and forth to Mar a Lago every weekend.

“Responding to less than half of the inquiries is pretty horrific,” said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, who directs the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.

“Put yourself in the shoes of a survivor: You’ve lost everything, you’re trying to find out what’s insured and what’s not, and you’re navigating multiple aid programs,” Mr. Schlegelmilch said. “One of the most important services in disaster recovery is being able to call someone and walk through these processes and paperwork.”

Most people apply for FEMA aid by calling the disaster assistance line or visiting the agency’s website, said Jeremy Edwards, a former FEMA spokesman under the Biden administration who is now at the Century Foundation, a liberal research organization. The Trump administration last month ended FEMA’s longstanding practice of going door-to-door in disaster-battered areas to help survivors apply for aid.

Sure he did, because the Merican People are not babies, they don’t need door-to-door help just because a flood has wiped out their entire neighborhood. What they need is Donald Trump running his mouth when he’s not too busy playing golf at Mar a Lago.

Yes and I’m considering revoking Trump’s membership in the human race. I suspect he’s a mustelid.

Trump says he’s considering revoking Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship.

I know nothing about Rosie O’Donnell apart from what I’ve just read in the past few minutes. The name is familiar but I thought she was that other Ros-something person. Rosie Duffield is my idea of a Rosie.

“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote. “She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

The mind of a child – a younger child every day. US citizenship is not dependent on being in the best interests of our Great Country, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Nothing is dependent on that, except perhaps the continued employment of people who work in the government – like everyone who works for Trump for instance.

And even if it did mean something, he can’t just up and do it, the way you can up and tidy the kitchen or feed the cat.

Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown Law, said Saturday that Trump’s threat of “coercive expatriation” was “patently unconstitutional.”

“For good reasons, it is difficult to denaturalize a U.S. citizen and even harder to expatriate one,” Vladeck wrote in April. “Congress has provided for only a handful of circumstances in which the executive branch is empowered to pursue such a move; and the Supreme Court has recognized meaningful constitutional limits (and an entitlement to meaningful judicial review) even in those cases.”

And Trump should be sharply aware of that, and disgusted by the very idea that a president could cancel someone’s citizenship because he’s in a snit, let alone that a president could publicly fantasize about doing so.

Trump has called O’Donnell “a real loser,” “crude, rude, obnoxious, and dumb,” and “a pig” over the years.

Ironic, isn’t it, when he is so very much all those things himself? When they are literally at the top of the list of accurate descriptors of Donald Trump?

The Trump admin has made it impossible for FEMA to do its job. Since that job is responding to emergencies, that’s unfortunate.

As monstrous floodwaters surged across central Texas late last week, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency leapt into action, preparing to deploy critical search and rescue teams and life-saving resources, [as] they have in countless past disasters.

But almost instantly, FEMA ran into bureaucratic obstacles, four officials inside the agency told CNN.

As CNN has previously reported, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.

How stupid (and destructive) can you get? Note the E in FEMA – it stands for EMERGENCY. You don’t want to put bureaucratic obstacles in the way of EMERGENCY disaster relief. Floods don’t wait for the boss to wake up and agree to release the funds.

For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.

In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.

But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.

Sorry, drowned people – sucks to be you.

About this whole “raid the kitchens” thing…

A federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the Trump administration to stop carrying out immigration sweeps in which she said federal agents have been indiscriminately arresting people across southern California without reasonable suspicion that they’re in the country illegally.

Since early June, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol and other federal agencies have been roving Los Angeles and surrounding counties arresting thousands of people in what civil rights lawyers characterized in a lawsuit last week as an unconstitutional and “extraordinary campaign of targeting people based on nothing more than the color of their skin.”

Well, the color of their skin plus California plus Los Angeles. Add it all up and it spells Demonic Invasion by Wrong Kind of Foreigners.

[The judge] issued two temporary restraining orders — one prohibiting immigration agents from arresting people without reasonable suspicion that they’re in the country illegally, and the other requiring agents to give people they arrest immediate access to lawyers. The orders, which apply to Los Angeles and six surrounding counties, are temporary while the case moves forward. But they could severely restrict the Trump administration’s ability to continue carrying out the raids that have sown fear and terror in immigrant and Latino neighborhoods since they started on June 6.

“It’s an extraordinary victory,” said Mark Rosenbaum, a senior lawyer with Public Counsel, one of the legal advocacy groups that filed the suit. “It is a complete repudiation of the racial profiling tactics and the denial of access to lawyers that the administration has utilized, and it means that the rule of law is back in Los Angeles.”

In a statement, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin criticized the ruling.

“A district judge is undermining the will of the American people,” McLaughlin said. “America’s brave men and women are removing murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists — truly the worst of the worst from Golden State communities. Law and order will prevail.”

Yes, that’s what judges are supposed to do. Sometimes the will of the ___ people entails a violation of human rights, and the role of judges is to prevent such violations.

Since early June, agents have repeatedly raided known hubs for Latino workers, including car washes, day laborer gathering spots, and street vendor corners. They’ve also pulled people who appear to be Latino out of their cars, and picked them up from bus stops and on sidewalks. They’ve arrested immigrants without legal status and U.S. citizens alike. Many of the arrests have been filmed by bystanders and posted to social media.

I wonder how many Latino workers there are at Mar a Lago.